Graphics and Sound

We’re gonna party like it’s 1999

For a PC game, GTA3 looks outdated. This is a general problem with games that are ported from consoles – most of the time the developers don’t bother with taking advantage of what PCs offer. For starters, the models lack detail, directly stemming from a low polygon count. The people models remind me of Half-Life or other games that came out around ’98-‘99. They have very blocky limbs and faces, and you see a lot of gaps between parts. In the same vein, GTA3 doesn’t take advantage of a PC’s ability to have higher quality textures. Everything looks grainy and low-resolution, even from a distance. The bigger objects like billboards and sides of buildings make this very obvious.

It doesn’t stop there however, there are lots of little things left over from the PS2 engine that makes GTA3 feel like a console game rather than a PC game. There’s a silly motion blur that tricks your brain to think there are more frames per second than there really are. If you make all the edges blurry, it’s harder to tell when the frame rate drops and skips a frame or two. I can tell they did this for the PS2 version because in a fast driving game like this, where a lot of polys are moving very quickly, you don’t want to see frames dropping. It’s a slick trick, but for a hard core PC gamer it’s just annoying. Remember a few years ago when the graphics card manufacturers were boasting their new motion-blur technologies? It was a hot topic, but it’s since faded away because everyone realized that motion blur sucks. No one wants to be shooting at someone’s motion trail.

Liberty City really impressed me by making sure that no two street corners are alike. You can walk up and down every street in the game and never see the same building twice. Everything from the storefronts to the office buildings is unique, giving the city lots of character. Each borough has its own style, from swanky upper class mansions to chinatown grocery stores to industrial factories. It makes you want to explore every inch of the city just to see what you’ll find (one of the major gameplay elements). This also helps you get around the city by allowing you to memorize landmarks and relative placements. When it comes time to duck into a paint shop to lose the pigs you know exactly where you need to go.

You’re listening to Liberty City Radio…

Listening to the radio stations is reason enough to play GTA3. They’re absolutely hilarious. The radio spoofs everything, from the genres of music to the lame DJ’s that fill the airways. The music is pretty good, even while it pokes fun at itself. The DJ’s (especially Lazlo) crack me up with never-ending jokes and smart ass remarks. Chatterbox alone will have you in stitches long enough to forget to swerve around that old lady in the middle or the road (or not). The commercials make you wish these guys would make a comedy CD full of them.

The sound effects are just as good as the music. Besides the car crashing and people yelling at you, the voice acting is top-notch – probably because they’re done by real Hollywood actors. People like Joe Pantoliano (Memento, The Sopranos), Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs), and Kyle MacLachlan (Showgirls, every David Lynch movie ever) make GTA3 feel like you’re in a gangster movie rather than a video game. I thought I recognized some of the voices while I was playing, but I didn’t truly think the voices came from the real actors. It wasn’t until I end credits that I realized these were real actors.